Bottled-water coolers are found in homes, offices and other locations where pure drinking water is desired. Typically, bottled-water coolers are comprised of a cooling-dispensing unit and an interchangeable glass or plastic water-filled bottle mounted in an inverted position on the top of the cooling-dispensing unit. Pure drinking water is supplied in the interchangeable bottle, cooled in the cooling-dispensing unit and dispensed through a manually operated tap on the cooling-dispensing unit. When the water is completely dispensed from the cooler, the empty bottle is manually replaced with a filled bottled by removing the empty bottle and inverting the filled bottle onto the top of the cooling-dispensing unit.
Conventional bottled-water coolers, however, have a number of inherent limitations and disadvantages. The water supply is not continuous and therefore requires the difficult and time consuming task of removing empty bottles and replacing them with heavy, filled bottles. Changing the bottles can be particularly difficult for small persons or persons of limited strength. Furthermore, water is often spilled when the bottles are changed. Therefore, the bottles of conventional water coolers cannot be changed without risk of wetting the areas around the coolers or the persons changing the bottles. Also, conventional bottled-water coolers cannot be placed in a location where water spillage could cause damage. Conventional water coolers, therefore, can be messy and wasteful.
As the water supply in conventional bottled-water coolers is not continuous, conventional bottled-water coolers also cannot be used during the times they are empty. Users must wait until the bottles are changed. Frequently, this means that users of conventional water coolers must wait until persons can be found to change the bottles of the coolers or until new shipments of filled bottles arrive for the coolers.
Bottle-less water coolers overcome some of the disadvantages of conventional bottled-water coolers. In bottle-less water coolers, water is continuously pumped or otherwise supplied from a pure water source into a cooling-dispensing unit similar to the cooling-dispensing unit of a conventional bottled-water cooler. Because the water is pumped from a continuous source and a bottle is not needed, bottle-less water coolers, as their name implies, do not employ bottles to store the pure water.
Because bottle-less water coolers do not employ filled water bottles, they also have a number of inherent disadvantages. People associate water coolers with conventional bottled-water coolers. When people think of water coolers, they think of conventional bottled-water coolers. It is the water bottle on the top of the cooler that most indicates to the public that the unit is a water cooler. Therefore, a bottle-less water cooler is less easily recognized by the public as a water cooler.
Bottle-less water coolers are also less psychologically attractive to the public than bottled-water coolers. The public associates the quality of water dispensed by a conventional bottled-water cooler with the pure, crystal-clear look of the water in the bottle above the cooling-dispensing unit. The pure, crystal-clear appearance of the water in the bottle reminds the user that the cooler only dispenses pure water. A water cooler without a bottle displaying pure water, however, appears to dispense little more than tap water and does not provide the psychological assurance provided by conventional bottled-water coolers that pure water, rather than tap water, is being dispensed. Therefore, bottle-less water coolers are less popular with the public than bottled-water coolers.